Haiku Aotearoa ’08 is go!

Woohoo! Just about time to head off to the opening event in the Haiku Aotearoa 2008 festival/conference/shindig.

I’m quite looking forward to everything, although I’m nervous as hell about the bit that I’m running – Saturday, 1:30 to 3:30: “Introduction to Haibun”. Not helped by the fact that Cyril Childs – who I consider one of the very best writers of haibun – is going to be there. The thing is, most of what I know about haibun comes from Cyril. Among other things, he ran a haibun workshop for the Small White Teapot Haiku Group a couple of years ago. I had been planning to quote him at length, and to freely re-use what I remembered from his workshop. No longer possible! So the last few days have been me and the computer, desperately trying to get it all up to a suitable standard. I had been planning to aim down quite a bit – simple, encouraging, basic – rather than be scholarly. Oh well. Thank heavens for the internet.
(Breathe now, breathe.)

It’s going to be interesting to meet everyone. Haiku is such an international genre – we tend to do a lot of corresponding, and as much with people overseas as here in New Zealand. Other than Cyril, I don’t think I’ve ever been face-to-face with any of the non-Christchurch Kiwi haiku writers. All those names to put faces to!